installing winxp from hard drive

have an old ibm thinkpad that keeps failing on install for xp coz cd rom is bad so am trying to copy i386 directory from cd onto hard drive. I used my old win98 startup diskette and ran fdisk to create primary dos partition. I was advised to copy i386 contents into folder of my c drive but cannot see c drive using win98 disk since it uses virtual disk for cd drive and i think it cant see my physical hardrive since i have 4gig on that partition but it says only 1/2gig available. I think maybe i am creating primary dos partition and shouldnt be in the first place. Any advice? thanks

Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download
Knoppix: http://www.knoppix.org/
Live CD can run directly from CD ROM.
I recommend ubuntu, because it can be installed on the fly. If you have succeeded

I was able to see my c drive after i formatted it. Problem is that it gives me similar message from cd install where it says "setup cannot copy the file: ftdisk.sys or some other file so don't know if somthing is wrrong with hard drive since i was able to copy whole i386 folder to hard drive from cd drive. If i copy enttire i386 directory from xp cd is that sufficient or do i have to copy entire xp cd?

I was able to copy i386 directory into hard drive but when i ran winnt it got through half of the install but failed again on one of the files. Could my hard drive be bad? The copy process from cd to hard drive in dos took long time so cd should be ok but failed 2 attempts when installing from c drive.

ok running scandisk now so wil see what it turns up. If it comes up clean, what else do you think could be causing it not to copy file into harddrive? Doesn;t make sense coz when i ran winnt from dos it copied all files into c drive but all files are already there i thought since it is no longer trying to copy from cd since all files are on harddrive.

just found my notes :
Sometimes it isn't possible to install Windows XP from the CD. But with the assistance of Windows 98 you can load Windows XP quite easily.

Follow these steps:
-connect the drive to a desktop PC, as only disk
-boot from a bootable win98SE floppy
-format the drive as fat32 (to be able to be recognised by win98)
-issue the command sys C:
-copy the xp cd to a folder (or just the i386 folder)
-copy the himem.sys and smartdrv.exe files to the root (you find them on any win98 system
-create an autoexec.bat file containing : smartdrv.exe
-create a config sys file containing : device=himem.sys
now put the drive back in the lappy, boot it up, and navigate to the i386 folder, start the xp setup by typing :
winnt

will try those steps but not too sure about connecting drive to desktop pc. How do i go about doing that. Do i have to take the drive out of the laptop? Im thinking that maybe the source xp cd i used is bad but dont know how to test that aside from running the cd install on another machine but dont wanna start an install and not finish on a working pc.

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Actually, the fact that you have copied to the drive alone, shows that your CD can be read perfectly.
Have you test your RAM?
All my experience having a random error copying caused by bad RAM, or bad source.

Ok, i stopped test after more than 3 passes and got no errors but shortly aferwards i tried installing xp pro this time with another cd and it says setup cannot copy file: esent97.dll which is a different file than the other 3 times i tried installing. 2x from cd and once from harddrive. So scanddisk reported no errors which means drive is ok and memory test came up clean so don't know what it could be. I used different source cds so source can't be bad on all 3. Doesn't make sense.

I tested the disk using scandisk but i will try the link you gave as well. Just to let you know, as another test, i installed freenas server from iso cd and it loaded fine and is running on the laptop now. That's such a quick and small install however so not sure it that is a good indication of whether cd drive or hard drive or ram is the culprit.

Ran an install of win2k instead of xp by copying i386 into c drive and it went through the lengthy copy process but no errors and then when the message came up that ms dos portion of setup completed which is after it copied all files it needed from c drive to windows directory then it restarted and it failed pretty quickly with another file it couldnt load. If ram is bad, it seems it doesnt affect it in dos but once it starts loading windows it seems to fail.

>> I tested the disk using scandisk << that is NOT a disk diag; it tests tyhe file sytem.
Please do as suggested; run the diag.
>> how can i find out what manufacturer is my hard drive << several ways :
-take it out and read
-from the BIOS
-from OS in device manager
>> If ram is bad, it seems it doesnt affect it in dos but once it starts loading windows it seems to fail. << starnge but possible - i still suspect your disk...test it...

Live CD can run directly from CD ROM.
I recommend ubuntu, because it can be installed on the fly. If you have succeeded booting into the system, try to install to the harddrive.

If you can't get into the desktop, there should be something wrong with your system (mainboard, ram, or CPU). If the error occured after you reach ubuntu desktop, and while you are installing, the problem is your hard drive

--- If ram is bad, it seems it doesnt affect it in dos but once it starts loading windows it seems to fail.
DOS only use 640KB, while windows uses full RAM. There is possibility, but when windows could not start, it can range between bad RAM, BIOS, storage controller, hard drive, mainboard, even processor cache or even the processor itself. Too low of processor voltage can affect that too.

Ok will try the ubuntu site. I really think it is cd rom since i borrowed a friends cd just to test and it also failed so can't be 4 bad cds. Would you happen to know the command line to invoke control panel? I am having strange problem where i cant access control panel on my other laptop which i am using to work on the bad laptop. I also couldn;t get into services but i know that command is services.msc. thanks

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